«Push the little red button and I belong to you» is a practice based workshop to design wearables.
The workshop departs from the premise that the success of wearables, depends on their ability to offer meaningful and purposeful experiences to users.
The workshop theme is the design of wearable systems that enhance human powers, teach and support the sensory system to regain the confidence to trust itself. Rebel Machines / Subversive Bodies to Unlearn automated behaviors.
The workshop focuses on custom made processes oriented towards making materials, algorithms and functionalities work together, in symbiosis with the body of the wearer. For that to happen students will work in teams to develop wearable design idea conceptualization and strategies to make electronics and garment communicate and listen to each others.
Workshop sections:
- basics of electronics
- programming logic
- Wearable design idea conceptualization
- creation of tools for physical movement data analysis
- Wearable prototyping
Workshop tools
Students will use the Microbit BBC board to create prototypes of interactive wearables.
The Microbit BBC board is a compact, programmable microcontroller equipped with:
A 25 LED matrix that can display simple images and text.
Two programmable buttons for user input.
Input and output rings that can be used to connect the micro:bit to other devices or sensors.
An accelerometer and compass, enabling movement detection and orientation.
Bluetooth and USB connectivity for interaction with other devices and the internet.
A range of sensors for temperature, light, and sound.
Methodology
To design interaction codes for the microcontroller students will apply physical and choreographic techniques to
- study and explore the human body physical structure and dynamics,
- build measuring tools to visualize, segment and extrapolate data of interest
- learn to capture, filter and calibrate data, to map physical movement to algorithmic action triggers
Attendants will work in teams to learn from each other and together extrapolate the necessary data to prototype their wearable ideas.
Motivation first, technology follows
Designing consists in the formulation of rules and limits based on a meaningful goal.
The strength of a design lies in its underlying idea, not necessarily in the complexity or sophistication of the materials or technology used. While the use of digital machines in the designing process is handy, the difference between a design that has a solid idea behind and one that does not, is that the former can be prototyped for testings with basic elements like paper, pencils and tape to be scaled afterwards.
What Students will Learn: